Simply Be Present

Written: Thursday, June 18, 2009 8:15pm

Yesterday I went home late at night after finishing some experiments and talking to people. I caught the last train home, which means I did not make it home until after midnight. I proceeded to sleep.

I woke up at 8:30 this morning and got ready as quickly as I could to make it to the 9:05am train. I was there two minutes early, which was good, but I did not have time to go to the grocery store to get my rice ball (onigiri) before going to work. That was unfortunate. Good thing, however, is that I had lunch with three other young students in the lab, and we all had a nice lunch at the Hospital Cafeteria. ‘masaya’-san, ‘boot’-san, ‘macho’-san and I all talked for about an hour and just enjoyed lunch together. It was nice to have lunch with them since I enjoy socializing with the people in my lab. They are all very interesting people, and very nice, just quite busy. Oh, something nice was that ‘Crazy’-san brought me a bottle of “Afternoon Tea (Milk Tea)” that she thought was better than the one I normally get. Also, Deng-san, who is one of the part-timers, gave me a piece of chocolate. I felt very loved.

In the afternoon I focused on finishing up my application for HBS’s 2+2 Program. The deadline is coming up soon (July 1st) and I have to finish working on the essays. Luckily the rest of the application is pretty much set, even the recommendation letters, but I’m still in the process of writing the essays, and there will definitely be a lot of re-writing and editing to do before I submit those. I hope to finish writing them by tomorrow, so I can edit them Saturday and then send them to a few people for feedback.

That being said, I’m quite tired now since all I’ve done this afternoon is work on essays. I’m planning to get dinner soon, and hopefully after that just go home. I’m sorry this day has not been too exciting, there is nothing new I can say to you. Oh wait, I haven’t mentioned this, in this building there are ALWAYS a LOT of people who come here to just check on inventory, check on lab machines, fix whatever is needed, replace filters, etc. These men all come dressed in suits and you can always see them in pairs, yes, only in pairs. They walk into rooms and replace something, they come talk to you if a machine you are using is making a weird noise, and most of the time, it seems, they just stand in every corner of the building. I think every time I go to the restroom during the day I see at least three or four pairs of them.

I think that’s quite interesting. I never used to see any of those in my lab. And my lab was also next to a building.

And my head hurts, I need to go eat now and rest at home. Have a nice day everyone!

Written: June 17 at 8:51pm

I’ve been usually writing my updates in the afternoons of the next day about the previous day, and that doesn’t quite make sense when it comes down to remembering details. I am, now, writing my entries about the same day before going home. As such, this entry will include both yesterday and today.

My day was very normal. I can’t remember many special things about it, other than everything is special in the same way it was the first day at work. Everyone keeps being nice, I talk a lot of Japanese with fun people, and I miss my friends and family from Boston & home. What was different about yesterday was that I went home early!

I went home much earlier than usual. I went to get dinner by 7:30pm, and then just went home so I as home by 9:30pm. I stopped at Mister Donuts to have, well, a donut, and realized that having a donut there at night makes me save money. Here is the reason, a donut there costs about 105 yen (that’s what mine cost me last night) and it includes FREE WATER if you stay in to eat it. With a donut I am more satisfied about my dinner (so I am not tempted to buy an onigiri (a 105 yen rice ball) at lawson), and because I have free water I have no need to buy a drink either (~150 yen), so there you go, I saved 150 yen and sat at Mister Donut for a while. I decided that if I was thirsty when I got home (and if it was before 11pm) I would go to Mister Donuts and eat a donut instead of buying a drink at the vending machines or lawson.

I also noticed something else, Japanese men, as in grown-up men wearing suits which are probably in their 30′s, play PSP against each other at Mister Donuts. It was funny to sit there and just notice that someone next to me was too excited about their PSP game, and it was quite a shock when I actually looked and saw that it was two grown-up men playing PSP. I thought I had entered a different dimension in which it was normal to care more about winning a PSP battle than getting home or actually talking to your friend sitting next to you.

That being said, after eating my donut I ran home, and there I bathed, shaved, and went to bed. I slept over 10 hours! I didn’t wake up until 8:30am, and I had gone to bed by 10:30 I’m quite sure. It was so nice to just wake up and feel energetic. Well, actually, I was quite tired for some unknown reason and couldn’t just wake up, but after a bit of a fight with my comforter I got up and felt good.

Today I came to work and I have actually been working most of the day. Usually I have long periods of times in which I’m doing nothing, and usually after 5-6pm I do absolutely nothing but my own things or talk to people. But even now, as I write this at 9pm, I’m staining an SDS gel. It’s been a busy day. It seems that even though I didn’t plan on it, it was quite a good plan to sleep so long last night.

There are a few other things I’ve noticed in Japan that I don’t think I’ve mentioned. First, I think that my face and my presence reminds Japanese kids of their homework, particularly their English homework. I’ve been able to experience how some Japanese kids that sit next to me or across from me, soon after looking at me with a face that reads something like: “Where is this gaijin (foreigner) from?!”, they reach for their bags and take out their English homework. I think it’s their own way of saying “I’m making an effort to understand your people.” Maybe they just want me to do their homework for them, but I never talk to them.

Another thing, as I was walking home yesterday I past by this old lady and she just stopped, right there, on the sidewalk where there was nowhere to go, and she just kind of looked up the rest of the path, as if wondering if it was worth it to keep walking, and then after a long pause she kept walking. I wondered for a second what was the motivation behind that little ‘break’ right in the middle of nowhere, it was kind of odd. Maybe she just stopped to re-calculate the number of gaijin she had seen in her life, I’m probably one of the first 10.

Anyway, lastly, something that I’ve found awesome is just walking down the street and hearing on the random radios by the stores music I like such as Lady Gaga (yeah!), Beyoncé, Jason Mraz, and even some Mariachis! I think it’s great. Also, my supervisor finds it extremely weird, as in incomprehensible, that I talk to my mother almost every day. Over lunch he kept saying things like “Every day?! What is there to talk about?” I think it must be really difficult for him to understand this cause as he says most people here in Japan talk to their parents only a few times a year (once every couple of months) once they leave their parents’ house. Now if I do that, that would be unforgivable to my mother.

So that is my update for yesterday and today, it’s not 9:20pm so I’m going to see how’s the gel doing and see if I can head home soon.

Thank you very much for reading.
御丸

Written: Tuesday, June 16, 2009

I woke up and got to work a bit late (at 9:20am, the seminar started at 9:15am). It was okay, though, no big problem. After the seminar (in which three papers were presented) was our Monday lab cleanup. You can tell that people liked how I mopped last week cause when I showed up they were like “Can you mop?!” and I was like… sure!

So I went and mopped again, and randomly people would come and say “It’s very clean, very pretty.” I mopped with all the energy I had, and again thought about all the years of training I’ve had mopping. Master mopper you can call me, at least that’s how they think about me here I’m guessing.

Anyway, after mopping, etc, I went to check my cells and discovered that there was a huge contaminant in them. After crying for many many seconds, I looked at it under the microscope and then, since there was nothing that I could do to save the cells, I bleached it all and threw it away. There went my cells, I though. Now, do you remember how last week there were some cells that I thought I had killed? It so happens that I looked at them under the microscope and it seems like a few cells remained alive and after a week of incubating there were many more cells in the plate! I was so excited.

After my cell frustration and re-enlightenment I went on with my life and used the internet for a while. I was finally able to check facebook, post pictures, update this blog, etc. Then I made a few solutions for my experiment and put some cells in some media to incubate overnight. That was the summary of my day, pretty much.

At night I talked to “Señor Potto Sensei” (nicknamed by me, of course) and we went to dinner together. By going to dinner together I mean, we walked downstairs to the convenience store together and bough microwaveable dinner sets and ate it together in the seminar room. We had a total of 20 minutes to do this before Señor Potto Sensei had to go back to check on his experiment. So we had dinner and talked, and then I went, talked to Crazy-san and Masaya-san for a while, and headed back home. I took the train at 9:48pm, which is the earliest I’ve headed home in over a week!

I thought, mm… now I’ll go home and sleep, but I think there is a masochist part of me that always finds a way for me to stay up until late. So instead of just going to bed, when I got to the Juso Station I walked to the free internet spot I found and called my mom. After talking to her for almost an hour, then I called my grandmas (both of them) and talked to my granddad and an uncle. It was after midnight when I finished talking to all these people. I then headed home. Entering my apartment I saw two cops, and I was like, OH! I was so surprised I almost ran to see what was happening. Turns out, there was a Japanese girl and a white kid involved. The number of foreigners in Osaka probably accounts for less than .001% of the population, and somehow, when there are cops interfering on something, there is one involved. Oh well… represent!

So I went into my apartment and I could hear the cops talking, communicating through their radio device thing, and I could hear the Japanese girl talking and talking and talking. It was like she could not shut up. Then, after a while, the cops left and the girl and the white boy started arguing about something. I don’t know what it was, but I know they were talking in Japanese and the white guy had a peculiar accent, which was funny. What was not funny, however, was that I could not sleep and it was after 2am. I ended up shutting down the window and sliding door to my room and turning on the A/C. Then I slept like a baby.

That was the end of my day. Interesting, huh? Lovely…

Written: June 15, 12:27pm

I haven’t written an update on my life since last Friday morning! What a shame. I should definitely keep making it a point to reflect on my experience on a daily basis. That being said, here is my weekend update.

Friday I pretty much stayed at work until late at night, and then headed back home. I had dinner at home, dinner I bought at the convenience store, and then went to sleep. It was a very low key, nice day. If there were any exciting events this day, I can’t remember now, one important reason to write every day.

Saturday I slept-in and woke up at around 10am, I did laundry and cleaned up the apartment. One of the benefits of Japanese-sized (i.e. small) apartments is that you can vacuum them completely in less than 20 minutes. It was great. After doing laundry and cleaning up the apartment I decided that I wouldn’t spend the entire day at home, so I ventured out to Umeda Station (Osaka) and then walked around the streets there. It was great to just walk around and see the nightlife starting out and developing. It’s quite a lively area at night there. I was tempted to just stay there all night and take a train home in the morning (as many people do) but I had quite an interesting day coming up and I needed to get a good night’s sleep.

For dinner Saturday I had the magnificent experience of having an Okonomiyaki! I must say, that was one tasty meal. Okonomiyaki is known to be a specialty of Osaka, so I wanted to try it for a while now. While exploring the Umeda Station area I walked across this place that was called something that started with “O”, I took out my iPhone and typed “Okonomiyaki” in the Japanese keyboard to see how I would write it using Chinese characters too (in Kanji) and what came out was “お好み焼き” which was how the store name started! I walked in, excited, and asked for a ‘deluxe’ okonomiyaki. When I had that one Okonomiyaki I thought I was tasting something made in heaven. So delicious! You can see a picture of my halfway done Okonomiyaki on my facebook pictures posted here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2086637&id=712370&l=9f88aaa6d8

That was the highlight of my Saturday. Sunday I woke up at ~9:00am and took the 10:00am train in the Kobe direction. I was fortunate enough to experience a Japanese Tea Ceremony, which was quite interesting. A very unique ceremony, and it was quite crowded. There were two ceremonies performed before I could actually take part of one because they have a limit of 25 people per ceremony, and there were many more people there. Women were walking around in their kimonos which were beautiful, and I (and the other men in the room) were wearing suits. Women that did not own a kimono were wearing very pretty dresses.

After the tea ceremony I went to Kobe and visited a few mansions (European style) and saw a lot of great things. I would go into detail explaining what I saw, but as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and I have over 100 pictures uploaded to facebook for your enjoyment. I wouldn’t want to write 1000 words for each picture, imagine that.

Just to reiterate, the link to the pictures is here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2086637&id=712370&l=9f88aaa6d8

Please take a look!

Thursday, June 11, 2009 – 7:09pm

Today I also came in to lab at around 10:30am, a bit later than I wanted, so I’m aiming to go home early and be in tomorrow by 9am. In lab I did a few things and then sent the associate professor an e-mail with the notes I took yesterday at the conference about how to publish to nature. I wrote the e-mail in Japanese and then re-wrote it in *English* to make sure I didn’t mess up.

A bit later the professor checked his e-mail and called me up and he said it was great and thanked me a lot. I felt good! It’s kind of like, if I don’t do much in lab in terms of experiments, I try to help out in other ways. The professor sent my notes to the entire lab and told them to review the notes and to save them. Then he encouraged everyone to publish to Nature. It was nice. He also told everyone to thank me… :$

The professor was also impressed by my Kanji name (Japanese name written with Chinese characters) and he told me “That’s great! You should have cards with your name in Japanese!” It would have looked very Japanese but my last name can’t really be written with Chinese characters in Japanese, there’s not a good sound for Fe in Kanji.

A bit later someone threw a paper on my desk and when I look it had my name printed on it using Kanji and Katakana. It said “フェルナンデス御丸” which is my name, printed in different colors 4 times! I was like, what? When I looked back it was the professor! Haha, I just started laughing and then everyone in the lab looked at it and they were asking me questions like “that’s your name? OH SUGOIIIII (awesome).” Apparently Masato-kun chose a really good Kanji name for me!

Here is a picture of the paper:

When Prof. Murakami found out I had a Kanji name he thought it was awesome and printed this out.

Anyway, after that I just went out to lunch and had Tonkatsu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tonkatsu_set_by_zezebono_in_Sapporo,_Hokkaido.jpg) for ~$4.50. So good. Then I came back to lab and just prepared a few solutions, ran an SDS gel with my post-doc after purifying a protein, and that’s about it. I want to go home soon, or go to dinner with labmates, one of those two, so we’ll see how that goes.

Update: (9pm)
I went to dinner with one of my lab friends, the youngest one in the lab (‘masaya-san’), and we had a chicken dinner set. It was delicious. I keep being impressed by the food here in Japan! We had a nice dinner conversation and after that came back to the lab. Now I’m planning to go home soon since I don’t want to be trapped again the game of staying in too long and not having time to sleep! Tonight I’m going home and sleeping~ I also need to take care of a few things… such as laundry… but that can wait until Saturday. I don’t think I’ll be coming in to lab on Saturday since I was told it was okay for me to stay home, but I just feel bad knowing that everyone else comes in, and has to get work done, while I’ll be sleeping at home and discovering new things on my own. After all, they are so nice and friendly.

Average Hours Spent working: about half of that.
The rest of the time? Socializing and using the internet. Talking to JKim online, too, cause she’s not that busy looking at birds’ brains.

Written June 10, 2009 at 9:08pm

I’m still in lab considering going home soon, but I’m waiting until my mom wakes up in Puerto Rico (it’s now 8am there) so I can call her through Skype. You have to keep in mind, folks, that I only have internet access at work or by paying at the internet café. I can find random wireless connections that are not protected, but those I can only use if the signal is strong enough, and my laptop’s battery only lasts for less than an hour before it runs out. The other option I have is to use a random internet connection that I found behind my apartment and talk through Skype on my iPhone, but the only problem I have with that is that sometimes the connection is weak and the call can drop.

That being said, today was a good day. I got to lab at around 10:30am because I was tired and slept a bit longer in the morning. Then, at around 11:30am, ‘Crazy’-San came over and asked me if I was ready for lunch. At around 12pm we headed in a group to lunch. The group was ‘King’-san, ‘Crazy’-san, ‘Boot’-san, ‘Masaya’-san, and me. Remember that most of their nicknames were created or decided by me.

Anyway, we had lunch and Crazy-san actually paid for my lunch. I thought that was really sweet of her. It was a welcoming lunch, I’ve had my lunch paid for by others twice since I got to Japan! The lunch was delicious, and as usual cheap. We talked a lot and I got many things explained to me in English or in Japanese, and I explained many things to them too. They are interested in practicing and learning English, which is fun. They are all so nice, I like them a lot.

In the afternoon, at around 4pm, we headed down to a lecture room to have a presentation on “How to publish to Nature Journal” by the Executive Editor. It was a nice talk, and I took a lot of notes cause I knew many of the Japanese researchers would be reading the slides and not really understanding what she was saying. I took many notes and copied them to my computer so they can read them. At around 7:30pm I asked ‘crazy’-san if she had eaten dinner already, and she hadn’t, so we made a small group and had dinner together. This time ‘King’-san and ‘Masaya’-san couldn’t join us cause they were busy, but ‘Macho’-san joined us. That nickname, Macho-san, I didn’t make up. ‘Crazy’-san made it up. For dinner we all headed down to the convenience store and bought little meals and had that for dinner in the seminar room. It was all good, and we talked a lot and made fun of each other, especially of ‘Crazy’-san.

Some other things I’ve noticed of Japanese people, they sleep a lot on their train ride home, and many people take naps in lab cause we’re here 12+ hours a day. Also, the slot machines and arcades are open since 9:30am, which I find weird. The Japanese are fun, I like them, and they ask me a lot of questions. They also seem quite interested in knowing more about the things I do, etc. They are easily surprised by people who can speak Japanese.

Also, they have a lot of delicious drinks in their vending machines. Yesterday night I tried cold tea with milk and it was really good. I am getting another one of those on my way back home tonight, for sure.

Oh, and the board with magnets that we use to indicate if we’re in lab or not is organized by seniority. I go above the secretary according to that board. She is, however, obviously much more important and respected than what the board says, after all she’s been in this lab since it started pretty much.

Update: I went home at around 10:00pm and called my mom at around 10:45pm through Skype on my iPhone. After that instead of going to bed I talked to Sharps-san from MIT until 1am and then went to bed. Great, right?

Written on: June 10, 2009 10:35am (local time)

I woke up yesterday and got ready to go to work. I took the train at 8:20ish and got to lab at around 9:20. From then on I did the usual, check my e-mails, talk to friends online, and not much more. At around 1pm I went to lunch and had the University Lunch (大学ランチ) and went back to lab. The afternoon in lab was busy, so next thing I know, it’s almost 9pm and I still have a gel running that I need to finish up in an hour.

At around 9:10pm I was really tired, and hungry (hadn’t had dinner) but instead of going to eat I just went to talk to my labmates (the ones from the birthday the day before). I had such a good time talking to them that next thing I know it’s 11pm and I have to go catch the last train home, which is at 11:42pm Since the walk from the lab to the station is about 20 minutes, I left at around 11:15pm. It was nice talking to my labmates, they have become friendlier (or rather, more comfortable around me) and we make a lot of jokes among ourselves. We speak mostly in Japanese, but there are two of them that want to practice English, so they ask me questions in English, and I try to answer in Japanese. When I don’t know words in Japanese I ask them how to say something, or what does a specific word mean, and they either tell me the English equivalent or try to explain it in Japanese. Having them in the lab makes it a lot easier to spend 12+ hours a day at work during the weeks, plus 2 hours commuting. We’re also planning to go on a trip somewhere together!

Something I realized yesterday is that in Japan people don’t worry about you walking along at night through not too well-illuminated streets. I walk to the train station from lab, which is a 20 minutes walk, and most of the streets are much darker than streets in the US. You can still see, but you can’t recognize someone else’s face until they are quite close to you. However, people just say ‘take care’ and good night. I also see women walking the same path sometimes at the same hours (after 11pm) by themselves. It seems that people are just very confident that nothing bad is going to happen.

Funny thing, I was thinking about this while walking to the station, and on a hill while walking down the street I hear 3 guys speaking English, and to me they sounded like the college guys that just got drunk and are talking about women. You know, those. My first instinct was to avoid them and to think, what are they doing here? Then I realized, I am a foreigner myself, what am I doing questioning their presence in Osaka? It was just a funny realization to see that I am more comfortable knowing that the people around me are Japanese, therefore, I feel safe.

I had dinner from Lawson (a 24 hours convenience store down the street). I got a ‘bento’ or lunch box which had several things that I don’t even know their names but it was delicious, filling, and costs only 400 yen (~$4.10). I then showered and went to bed.

It was my first ‘regular’ day, with nothing really new other than a nice feeling when talking to labmates, which are becoming my friends this summer. We agreed on having lunch together today, so that should be nice!

Written Tuesday, June 9, 2009 – 9:43am

I woke up and got to work at 9am, at which point I was just browsing the internet for a bit. At 9:10am the lab professor tells me that there’s a lab meeting (sort of a journal group) starting at 9:15am and we’re all expected to be there, so I head to the room. I had not eaten breakfast, and I had my rice ball (onigiri) on my right hand and my lab notebook on the left, since I didn’t know if it was rude to eat then, I just held it with my stuff. I thought the meeting was going to be until 10 or so, but it went until 11. At that time I was so hungry, I couldn’t wait to get out and eat my rice ball. Turns out that right after the Monday meetings there’s lab clean-up. Damn…

I mopped a room, and apparently all those years of practice at home and in CROEM made me a really good mopper (is that even a word?). People in the lab were saying things in Japanese like: “It’s so clean!” and “Omar clean all this by himself? Wow, it’s too clean.” etc. I felt good, it was sort of like, if I don’t do anything productive in lab during the week, at least I can mop the room well. That kind of trades off for my use of the internet.

Anyway, after that I just did a few things in lab. I prepared a 5M NaCl solution for PCR cloning, and put some cells in coomassie blue solution for SDS tomorrow. I then froze them, of course.

After that, at around 7pm I was getting ready to go home, but two other people from the lab told me that there was going to be cake for someone’s birthday at 9:30, and it was a surprise. So I just went to get dinner at the ‘student center cafeteria’, which is really cheap and delicious, and then went back into lab until 9:30. I thought the cake was going to be from everyone in the lab, but a bit later one guy from the lab, who is the youngest one here (23 years old) and wants to practice English with me, told me that the birthday celebration was going to be soon, and told me to follow him. It turns out only ~5 other people had been invited to it, I felt so special! Anyway, there were small cakes for everyone there, and one bigger one for the birthday boy. A bit later the birthday boy came in and we sang ‘happy birthday’. The Japanese do sing it like: “Happy Bathday, to you” or at least that’s how it sounded to me. And they clap while singing it. It was cute.

The cake was delicious and I stayed with them until 11:00ish and then headed back to the train. I finally got home at around 12:20am and then checked a few things, and went to bed. It was really nice to socialize with that group my labmates. They were a lot of fun, and we nicked name each one of them (or rather, I did. I was the one who finalized their nicknames). One is “Crazy-San” and another is “Shy-san”. These names were chosen by their friends who told me they were crazy and shy, respectively. The others we made up were: “san-tyan”, “masaya-san”, “bootsu-san” (sort of like a boot), and “Señor Potto-san”. That last one was the coolest, of course. “Señor Potto-san” was the birthday boy, so for that night only he was also “Tanjoobi-san” which means Mr. Birthday.

Anyway, it was a very interesting day. I had my first experience sitting through a lab meeting in Japanese in which they were discussing three papers and I could only understand the English words they would say. This is kind of what it sounded to me: “lalalallalaa calcium lalalalalala signaru lalalala lalala la lala hai lalalala”. It was a lot of fun to sit through that. At the end of each paper the professor asked if we had questions, and when he asked me I simply said: “Nani mo wakarimasen desita” or “I didn’t understand anything.” Everyone laughed and we kept going. It was also fun having my first experience hanging out with a group of Japanese people.

Oh, I had to introduce myself in Japanese to other people through a video conference, that was interesting. I was like… hai… “I’m Omar, from MIT. I come from Puerto Rico.” is that good enough? Haha, it was fun being on the spot for that second.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got for now. It’s time to get back to work

June 7, 2009 – 9:30 pm

Today I woke up and first thing I did, yes, I went to the internet café and checked my e-mail, bank accounts, etc. I then proceeded to buy an onigiri (rice ball) and then headed out to my first day of adventures in Osaka. I met a friend of a friend, and he took me to a few places around!

First we went to this place to have lunch, and I’m such a horrible person that I did not take pictures of the food or remember the name of what I ate… I can just tell you about it. It was like a 2-eggs omelet over rice with bacon, corn, and a cheese sauce. It was really delicious.

After that we went to see the Osakajo, it’s a castle in Osaka. I took many pictures and you can see them in facebook, of course.

The link is here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2085882&id=712370&l=533d4c8e9c

After that we went to a mall, and after a bit headed back home. On my way home I was looking around for where I wanted to eat dinner, and I made up my mind that I would have something that looked delicious and that was not something I would just take home and eat there. So I looked around, and there it was, right in front of my eyes all this time and I had not noticed it, a lovely sushi place.

The concept of this kind of sushi places is the following, you sit around a big table, and the chefs iare in the middle. They make any sushi they want and they put it on this moving platform that goes all around the table. If you see something you like, you pick the plate up. In each plate there are usually two pieces of sushi, and depending on the color of the plate is how much they cost. Blue was 100 yen (about $1), yellow was 240 yen, and silver was 320 yen. I was going to be a cheap bag and only eat a few, but then I decided I’d rather have a full sushi meal than eat part of it and then go buy something else cause I wasn’t full. I ended up getting completely full, including eating two of the most expensive sushi, and paid a total of 1600 yen (~$17) and considering that in Japan you usually don’t tip, this is the cheapest and most delicious sushi meal I’ve had at a restaurant, ever. Oh, I love Japan.

Also, more good news, I found out there’s an open wireless internet connection quite close to my apartment (near the back door) so I’ll using that when I need to post something quick, rather than go to the other place 15 mins away from here! I also found out that Skype for the iPhone lets me actually place calls for free to other skype members, and the same rates as if I were using a computer. The iPhone application is very well designed, I must say, so I’ll be using that to talk to my family when I can’t get online through MSN Messenger and use a webcam.

That’s all I’ve got for today, there are many pictures online. See that there’s a picture of KFC, and I didn’t take a picture of McDonalds but I’ve seen like 3 of those too. KFC is open since like, 7am, which is kinda weird…

A few other things I’ve noticed in Osaka!
Older people also run bikes, all the time. And by older I mean, not just adults, but men and women that could be my grandparents!
In many areas cars traffic in the same streets as people and bikes do. I find it quite dangerous and interesting. Even in what seems like the interior of a shopping street, there are cars. I always think that there’s something approaching me from behind… and I’m usually right.
Japanese people seems to love coin machines (those casino-like ones), and arcades. There are many, many around here.

June 7, 2009 – 2:39am

After waking up at 8:00am, I went through my morning routine and headed to work. It was Saturday, so I wasn’t sure about going to work, but I decided to go since most of my co-workers would be there, and I wanted to use the internet for free. I got to lab at around 9:30am and talked to some people online. At around 11am my boss, the associate professor in the lab, came to talk to me. He is really funny, and a really nice person, so I had a great time talking to him. He also seems concerned about my well-being and me having people to spend time with. He asked me if I had friends around here, etc.

A guy came to my desk yesterday and introduced himself, I asked him if he was doing research in that lab (it didn’t seem that way since he was dressed in a suit) and he said that no, he just goes there to sell tips, pipets, and other things to the professor. He was a really nice guy, and when I stopped talking to him he went back to the associate professor. I’m sure the professor told him to introduce himself to me, which is funny. I wonder if the professor was sitting there and told him: “that foreigner needs friends, go talk to him.”

Anyway, my boss asked me things about what I liked to do, and what I wanted to do, and he suggested a few things I could do in the project. I told him that it sounded good since I had applied those skills before (PCR, cloning, etc.) and that if I had any questions I’d ask the post-doc I’m working with. He seemed satisfied with this answer, and after we talked for a bit longer he went back to his desk to discuss something with another researcher in the lab. I then plated some cells, and afterward went to lunch. Lunch was delicious and cheap, as usual.

At around 3pm I decided to head back home since I was a bit tired and did not want to spend my Saturday in lab. I got home at around 5pm and I was so tired I just laid on bed for a bit… which turned into me falling asleep! I woke up at 1am. Haha. So much for having fixed my sleep schedule this week, now I went back to a completely messed up sleeping schedule. I’ll try to sleep in an hour or so.

So at around 2am I decided to go out and see how lively it was around here at that time. I went down the street and called my mom a few times, but she didn’t pick up. After a bit I just kept going and walked around. There are quite a few places open at night, some food places, some karaoke bars, and some 24 hours convenience stores. I kept going, and when I crossed an underground ‘bridge’ at the other side this woman came to ‘talk to me’. When I said I was doing fine she offered me a ‘massage’ and said that ‘it will feel good, for sure’. This woman looked pretty cute, and I wondered why she was offering massages in the corner of a street by the train station at 2am, but I just told her not to worry, I was doing just fine as it was. She asked me where I was from and told me that I was cute, like three times. I felt good for a second, and then realized that she probably tells that to everyone she offers a massage to. Oh gosh, the oldest profession, mastered by a selected few around the world – a self-selected few, that is.

I kept going and then stopped a bit further down to call my parents from a different phone. I called home and my stepfather answered, so I talked to him and my brother for a few minutes. Then I tried calling my mom again, this time she answered. Turns out she was talking to someone else when I called before, and she thought my call was one of those random phone promotions since the phone number was weird. I talked to her for a while and she told me to call my dad, so I did. I talked to my dad for a bit longer and then headed back home. On the way back home the same woman offered me a massage… she really didn’t get it, I had NO interest in a massage…

I told her that I was fine, not to worry, and told her to have a good night. I am so polite. A few seconds later this man was walking past me (in her direction) so I decided to see how he would manage the same situation. Turns out he just kept walking as if she hadn’t talk to him at all. I guess when you have been offered enough massages in your life you learn that it’s easier not to pay attention to the offers at all. Sort of like my mom not answering the phone cause she thought it would just be someone trying to sell her something… I guess life teaches you something every day. I just felt bad completely ignoring such a ‘cute, nice girl’.

So that was pretty much the summary of my day. On the way to work this morning two men were walking down the street and when I looked at them they greeted me: “Konnichi wa! (good afternoon!)” and I greeted them back. One of them stopped for a minute and asked me where I was from, and what I was doing here, and then wished me good luck! He was so nice.

Mm… I don’t think I’ve mentioned here that I love the water heater in my apartment. I turn it on and with a control set the exact temperature I want the water at, so when I shower/bathe I don’t have to adjust the temperature by opening both the cold and hot water – I just open the hot water hose and the water comes out at the temperature I want. Sigh… just thinking about it makes me want to go bathe. ~

Also, I think there is something special about water in Japan. When I shower or bathe, the water feels so nice on my skin. I don’t know what it is, but it just feels more like I’m bathing in a natural water pond than at home. Maybe that’s just my mind making things up? Not sure.